Compellent Expands Channel Sales to 34 Countries

Compellent Technologies, Inc. is growing its 100 percent channel-only sales model across North America, Europe and Asia to meet continued demand for Storage Center, the company’s award-winning enterprise network storage solution.

To help meet this demand, Compellent has to date recruited several hundred channel partners in more than 34 countries around the world, and formally launched its business in France and Italy.

Brian Bell, vice president of sales at Compellent, explains the company’s channel strategy: "Unlike other SAN vendors who use resellers for distribution but ultimately compete with them via direct sales, Compellent has no direct sales force and focuses all of its resources on helping partners sell and close deals. With our unique all-channel ‘assisted sales’ model and the industry’s most innovative storage solution, Compellent gives our channel partners around the world a major advantage over the competition when it comes to selling to, and servicing, their clients."

Andy Hardy, Compellent’s managing director of international sales, said: "Compellent continues to seek new business partners who demonstrate high levels of innovation, customer service and technical expertise for mid-sized and large enterprises. Once recruited, we anticipate a long and successful relationship with each one."

Compellent’s channel partners all bring strong previous storage experience and have deployed Compellent’s storage solution with more than 1,300 different customers worldwide. High profile international customers include Italian retailer Iper Montebello, Dutch insurance company Van Ameyde Group, French publisher Group Marie Claire, UK paper logistics firm gm2, Belgian medical organization Wit Gele Kruis, and Australian genetic research institute CMRI, to name just a few.

Darryn Capes-Davis, the information communications and technology manager at Children’s Medical Research Institute (CMRI) in Sydney, Australia, said: "Our small IT group was spending way too much time on storage management. We wanted a solution that would let us focus on new projects so we could better contribute to the success of the institute. The Compellent SAN has a single, easy-to-use interface that reduces provisioning times and automates frequent tasks. We estimate that it has cut the time to manage storage by at least 50 percent."

Giovanni Oteri, ICT Manager of Milan-based Iper Montebello, a pioneer and leader of hypermarkets in Italy with revenue of EUR 2.5 billion, said: "One of the main reasons why we decided to adopt a new storage solution was to react quickly and thoroughly to increasing demands, typically determined by the users’ request to keep more historical data online. Once we realized how innovative the Compellent technology was, all other storage options seemed obsolete to us. We have been really satisfied with our experience with the Compellent solution because it has saved us money, made it easier to plan future storage investments and allowed us to plan a modular future growth strategy."

Samuel Chemouni, IT Services Manager for fashion retailer Gérard Darel in Paris, France, said: "We considered Compellent’s SAN alongside solutions from some of the biggest names in the industry. However, Compellent was able to offer a cost-effective solution with a host of additional functionality that I would have had to pay a premium for from any other storage vendor. I was also impressed with the scalability of the SAN, which allows it to grow with our organization’s storage requirements — and with the excellent levels of customer support I have received from Compellent."

The continued success of Compellent’s global channel strategy is reflected in the fact that from May 3-7 the company will host a record number of channel partners at its annual conference, C-Drive, in Minneapolis. At this event more than 300 international Compellent resellers and end-user customers will preview the company’s eagerly awaited next-generation SSD and disaster recovery technologies.